Month: May 2017

This is a hella basic casual Friday outfit, but I’m a sucker for burgundy, and a sucker for loose, slouchy tops, and here you are: a possibly extra mundane blog post. In my defense, there is leopard print involved. Also, the top has some neat features like mixed fabrics (silk on the front, some kind of stretchy material on the back and arms) and a hi-low hemline. Like so:

hi-low

Because it was a work outfit, I threw on a blazer. It’s a bit oversized, so I like wearing it almost as a jacket. The dark grey (with a faint pinstripe) goes well with many things. It also provides coverage for when, say, you discover that your silk top-front is very, ahem, clingy. Maybe that is why someone donated an otherwise perfectly nice top. I always wonder, you know.

I’ve been wearing this sweater constantly since I bought it late last month. If you don’t believe me, Instagram will back me up. It’s just so darn cozy and interesting looking. I guess I’m a sucker for cocoon silhouettes — who knew? To be fair, this sweater has other things going for it, like that gorgeous dark green colour. Right up my alley, erm, wardrobe palette. It’s not an easy colour to find in stores; many similar greens are either too teal-leaning, or too bright. This green looks almost black in some lights, but up close it has those darkened emerald depths to it. This MaxMara skirt (thrifted 2 years ago) is the same, rare shade, which is what prompted me to try the two pieces together one morning when I was trying to figure out a topper for this outfit.

forest green for the winall the angles

The outfit felt incomplete without a topper, but nothing I tried really worked for me. Black makes this green feel “blah”, and (dark) navy didn’t feel right either … and then I had a light bulb moment. Green sweater for the win! I loved the result, which felt like an updated take on an old uniform (cardigan + pencil skirt). My favourite part, I think, is the tweaked silhouette. In the past, I have tended to gravitate towards “flattering” silhouettes that highlight my hourglass-y shape, but I am finding myself increasingly drawn to more architectural shapes that don’t necessarily do anything for my figure but are somehow quite pleasing to the eye. My eye, anyway. I like clothes with a bit of slouch to them. It’s the nonchalance about them that feels fresh. After doing this for this many years, “fresh” is a nice bonus.

I have a bit of a fascination with dictators. I don’t know what that says about me, honestly. If I had the time, I would happily sit through every show in A&E’s annual Hitler extravaganza. [Is that still a thing? Or did A&E dump Hitler in favour of sharks?] However, I am also oddly embarrassed of my predilection, so I rarely indulge it. I feel the same way about serial killers, which actually makes some sense since most dictators are serial killers on a grand scale. Anyway, the fact is that I know very little about dictators, save for what I’ve absorbed through osmosis from popular culture — and when it comes to this topic, North America (or its entertainment industry, I should say) is kind of obsessed with Hitler. Possibly because the West has been familiar with the details of his crimes almost from the beginning? I’m not sure.

As difficult of a read as A Night In Winter proved to be, it did prompt me to look up Simon Sebag Montefiore’s biography of Stalin. I knew very little, besides a thumbnail sketch, of the man. As with his biography of the Romanovs, Montefiore appears to be exhaustive in his research of Stalin. The book is thick, and dense with facts. It doesn’t spend a lot of time on Stalin’s childhood or early years in the Communist Party; Montefiore also wrote Young Stalin, which probably explains why he would not want to cover the same ground twice. Instead, the book focuses on the period from the 1930s up to Stalin’s death. This was actually the period of greatest interest to me, because I wanted to learn more about what life in Stalinist Russia had been like. The book does touch a fair bit on the main figures in Stalin’s political and personal life, which is what I was hoping for, but this came with a downside; there were a lot of people to keep track of, and some of them were too one-dimensional to be interesting. I frequently found myself wishing that, in addition to Stalin, Montefiore had focused on a smaller group of subjects — people like Svetlana Stalin, Nadya and Zhenia Alliluyeva, and Lavrenti Beria, who interested me from a psychological, rather than political perspective. I’m probably being unfair, because I’m sure the book was intended to be a political biography rather than a psychological portrait; with that said, Montefiore strikes me as a perceptive armchair psychologist, so I enjoyed the snippets of personality analyses sprinkled throughout the book.

Stalin was a long slog of a read, but I did to finish a shorter, breezier book in the meantime: If Walls Could Talk by Lucy Worsley. I love books of this kind, like The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England by Ian Mortimer. I thought IWCT also bore a lot of similarity to Bill Bryson’s At Home, though the latter is (in my opinion) a superior book. I enjoyed IWCT, but I also found it rather shallow. Balancing scholarship and entertainment value is not easy, but I think that authors like Bryson and Mortimer hit a better balance than Worsley in this book. Some chapters were only a few pages long, and left me longing for more information. I would recommend this book as a library loan, rather than a purchase.

On to articles … this NPR report on maternal mortality rates in the US is absolutely heartbreaking but also a tremendously important call to action. I was fortunate enough to go through two uncomplicated births, and never questioned the level of care I received — I just took it for granted. I cannot fathom being in a situation of utter vulnerability and not feeling 100% confident that I was getting the best care possible.

On a different note, this reddit thread (and the subject article) on the ethical aspects of fast fashion was another thought-provoking read. That there are systemic problems with current manufacturing practices is undeniable; but, as addressed in one of the comments, what happens to garment factory workers if those factories close down because US consumers start buying only “made in USA”? The answer seems to be to advocate for better working conditions and tighter government controls (to ensure safety, fair labour practices, etc.) in those same countries where manufacturing is a key industry now … but how can consumers be sure that they are supporting companies that rely exclusively on ethical manufacturers, thereby incentivizing the whole industry to move towards that direction? Personally, I don’t trust initiatives of companies like H&M that purport to demonstrate how ethical the retailer is being; they have too much at stake to truly be transparent. Organizations like Ecoage are great, but I am not sure that their reach is great enough – yet – to impact the average consumers, especially those on a budget. I don’t know what the answer is. Shopping secondhand, as much as possible, is one answer, which works for me but which may not work for everyone. I get discouraged by broad statements like “under capitalism, there is no ethical consumption.” There have to be more options.